Service providers are experiencing ever-growing service usage by subscribers. A service provider implements a charging system in which subscribers are charged for their service usage. An example charging system may implement a policy and charging control solution, such as that developed under 3GPP™ (3rd Generation Partnership Project) IMS (Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystems) and provides a new standard for charging system business models.
In addition to overall data volume, mobile connected digital devices (e.g., mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets) and the applications that run on them are also driving a change in consumer behavior. The manner in which consumers interact with one another at work, home, and leisure has changed dramatically within the last decade, prompting a new term to describe consumer behavior—the digital lifestyle. The digital lifestyle also introduces a multitude of new players within the communications landscape, including the so called over-the-top (OTT) providers, on which consumers rely within their daily lives, and often trust and admire.
The digital lifestyle, in turn, has characteristics that reflect the attitudes of consumers immersed in this new economy. Consumers expect to be “always on,” that is, they expect to be constantly connected, no matter what their location or device they happen to be using. Along with the instant gratification expected from such a real-time communications environment, consumers also require a certain amount of personalization and control. They want service plans and tariffs that correspond and are tailored to their particular lifestyle, and they want the control to be able to adjust their plans whenever they wish. And, they expect that their experience with their service provider to be simple, easy, and predictable, with no surprises.
The digital world in which we live, work, play, and socialize has thus created immense opportunities for communications service providers, however serious pressures and challenges must be overcome. Communications service providers understand, embrace and tackle those challenges head-on will be the ones that thrive, as revenue opportunities are abundant for communications service providers in this new digital economy.
Service providers (e.g., telecommunications operators and the like) commonly provide pre-paid services to their customers (commonly referred to as subscribers). Such pre-paid services can take the form “free minutes” (e.g., credit for so many minutes of calls (or a dollar value therefor, purchased on a monthly basis, for example), “free megabytes” (e.g., credit for a given amount of data usage, purchased on a monthly basis, for example), “free messages” (e.g., credit for some number of texts, purchased on a monthly basis, for example), and the like, or where the customer pre-pays a certain amount into their account in order to hold a credit balance, which is then used in order to provide service. However, traditional approaches to maintaining and providing information regarding subscribers' accounts and their use of such services has failed to keep pace with innovations in this area, and thus has failed to meet the needs and expectations of subscribers and service providers alike.